


Adam, Missing

by strikerflynnmr



Series: Tumblr Prompts [1]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-06-04 21:52:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15156371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strikerflynnmr/pseuds/strikerflynnmr
Summary: This work takes place at the end of the currently-published series, that is, after Opal. There are some spoilers.TW: mild gore





	Adam, Missing

**Author's Note:**

> This work takes place at the end of the currently-published series, that is, after Opal. There are some spoilers.
> 
> TW: mild gore

Ronan’s tattoo starts to bleed overnight. It isn’t the pain that wakes him, because there is no pain. There’s only rolling over into a puddle of wet and thinking:  _shit, did I leave the bottle open again?_

It’s dark, and he’s asleep, and kind of a dumbass, so it takes him a few squints and blinks before he sees that whatever he dipped his fingers in is red—yes, red—and shit, that’s probably not good. That’s  _definitely_ bad.

The next few moments are a strobe-light image slideshow: the hallway, sideways, as Ronan stumbles into the bathroom—the stabbing lights—the inside of his eyelids as he blocked them out—and then the blood, everywhere, all over. Like he did a mudslide through a slaughterhouse.

There’s only one person to call.

Declan arrives to find Ronan sat near, not in, the bathtub, with a pile of towels pressed between his back and the side of the tub. Ronan grimaces at sight of loose tie and button-up. No idea what time it is, but Declan was still working.

He helps Ronan sit up—“Jesus is this all yours” “It’s coming out of me, isn’t it?”—and some of the towels have begun to stick so they come away with a wet peeling sound, like Declan is skinning an orange. 

“It’s stopped bleeding,” he says. He inspects the stainage of the pile at large. It quiets and disquiets him. “I was 45 minutes away.”

This was not an admonishment for calling on him. It was an admonishment for calling on  _him_.

“There was no one else,” Ronan says. “Adam’s at college, Opal’s in New Cabeswater, Gansey, Cheng, and Sargent have all fucked off together on the other side of the country, and Chainsaw is a fucking bird.”

“Matthew?” Declan suggests halfheartedly.

“Matthew would get scared.”

There was no one else.

“You should call Adam.”

Ronan snorts. “And tell him what?”

“He’d want to know about this.”

Maybe, but that kid is stressed enough about midterms and Ronan isn’t going to be the one to crash his two-hour nap for the night.

“He’s busy.”

“When’s the last time you two talked?” asks Declan, as if he can read Ronan’s mind.

It’s a hint of the old new-Ronan. Surly and full of acid and ready to get in a fight that is guaranteed to leave no survivors.

Ronan rolls over on his side so his spine can get its shit together. It puts him mostly on the floor. “He doesn’t want to talk to me.”

His phone gets shoved into his hand. Declan says, “I’m going to find you something sugary.”

He leaves.

Ronan groans, stares mutinously at the scratched-up dark screen, and chucks the thing into the hallway. _Clatter-clatter-clat._

A few minutes later, flat footsteps ascend the stairs, and Ronan hears a business-like, “Hold on.”

Declan’s shoes appear, and then Declan’s phone is shoved in Ronan’s face, and Declan says, “Adam.”

Ronan accepts it. There’s also a glass of orange juice, which he completely downs before saying, “How many hours?”

“Three,” Adam answers, not missing a beat. “What happened, Ronan?”

“It’s nothing to worry about. A little Cabeswater fuckery. Go back to sleep and pass your classes.”

“You’re bleeding again!” says Declan, with a lot more energy than the moment holds as he snatches a towel with a dry patch and presses it to Ronan’s back. Ronan switches the phone to his other ear.

“You need my help,” Adam says. The suspicious pause he takes makes Ronan think he waited for a yawn to pass before saying it.

“That’s might fuckin’ bold of you to assume,” Ronan replies sharply. He can feel it now, sliding down his back. It’s warm. Like fingers or lips running down his skin. “You’re four hours away and you’ve gotten three hours of sleep. You probably have eight tests tomorrow and a shift at work before you kill yourself studying. Don’t have to be at school to do that math. I’m  _fine,_ you hear me? I’ve got Declan. This is my shit, you worry about yours.”

“You’re doing the thing again, Lynch,” Adam told him patiently.

“The thing?”

“Yeah,” Adam said. “The asshole thing. That thing where you’re an asshole. You’re doing it again.”

“You’re-”

“You’re my shit. I’ll see you in four hours.” Adam hangs up.

Ronan drops the phone. It pops out of its case, and his back is still bleeding, and his boyfriend is going to die on the road, and all he wants to do is go back to bed.

“That wasn’t so bad,” says Declan, and Ronan grimaces.

“Eavesdropper.”

“The volume was on loud.” He swaps one towel for another, but it doesn’t matter. They’re all covered. “You haven’t economized well.”

“He doesn’t want to come down here,” says Ronan. “He’ll act like there’s no problem because he thinks he has no right to, but missing a day of classes will take a year off his life. He’ll be pissed. He doesn’t want to come down here.”

“Why don’t you want to see him?” Declan asks suddenly, tartly, ripping off the band-aid.

And Ronan contemplates the opportunity of bleeding out for so long that he never answers.

-

The bleeding doesn’t stop, but Ronan’s face is still full of color so Declan chalks up his remaining belly-down on the bathroom floor as decision and exhaustion. He goes with Ronan’s blessing for a nap/collapse across the hall, but he leaves the door open and says he trusts Ronan will shout if something goes wrong. (“Your face went wrong.”)

After forty-five minutes of lying there Ronan picks himself up, kicks the stained towels into a pile smushed between the wall and toilet, and inspects his tattoo in the mirror. It’s oozing a little. Not too bad. He grabs his mostly-clean bedsheet and the first aid kit, and he goes out onto the deck. It’s fucking cold out in his boxers but he doesn’t plan to stay out for more than a few minutes, he just… 

He needs some air.

For the first time in memory, Ronan is not eager to admit that Declan has it wrong. Ronan doesn’t  _not_  want to see Adam. But he knows that Adam’s priority will always be Adam, and that means he’s going to be gone again by this time tomorrow. It’s not the reunion. It’s the overhanging shadow of another goodbye. He doesn’t want to live through that because then it’s back to just  _thoughts_  of Adam, and Ronan doesn’t think about Adam Parrish with his brain, he thinks about Adam with his blood and his bones and his heart. Some days, it feels like Adam Parrish is  _all_ Ronan thinks about.

And he is not entirely sure he didn’t make a Dream-Adam tonight.

Though there has been Cabeswater in Adam for a long time now, there has never been any Adam in Cabeswater that Adam does not allow to be there. And tonight, because Ronan isn’t enough—isn’t strong enough, isn’t himself enough—isn’t  _enough_ , he broke that rule for his own gain. Because he misses Adam. And he let his emotions get the better of him, in a way the Greywaren could not let himself do.

He’s still sitting there, trying to bandage up his back on his own, when he becomes suddenly aware of grass swishing. There’s a shine on the morning dew as the sky turns silver-gray.

It’s him.

“I saw you in my dreams,” Ronan blurts, and Adam blinks at him in surprise. He finishes crossing the lawn, gliding, and Ronan is so fucking  _relieved_. “We were in Cabeswater together. That’s the only reason I freaked. You didn’t have to come down here.”

The specter of Adam sits behind Ronan and wordlessly takes over the job of bandaging. “You freaked?” he repeats lowly. The Henrietta in him makes it come out  _freekt_. Ronan closes his eyes.

He doesn’t want to say anything, but it’s either put it all out between them or risk doing damage. Love is frustrating like that; it has to be free in order to grow, but you can’t leave it alone and expect it to be strong. It’s going to drive Ronan fucking crazy.

“I wasn’t ready to see you,” says Ronan.

“So you wish I hadn’t come.”

“You wish you hadn’t come, either. I told you not to.”

“I don’t think you’re concerned enough about this,” says Adam, and Ronan’s heart skips a beat until Adam adds, “It’s a lot of blood.”

“It’s not mine,” says Ronan, sweeping a hand under his nose and sniffing. “I’d be dead by now if it was. It’s from Cabeswater.”

“Because of the dream you had,” Adam surmises. “Because, what, you didn’t want to see me? I’ve only been gone for a few months and you refuse to talk to me now? I told you this would happen.”

Adam drops the bandage on the deck and scoots away, toward the rail, his face and posture turning to stone as Ronan says, “Parrish.”

“I said it wouldn’t work—”

“We were  _scared_  it wouldn’t work—”

“—and now I’ve made a total ass of myself driving down here to help you, so if you want to f-finish it…” Adam clicks his tongue against the back of his teeth.  _Tcsk_. Just like that. And it’s a very sharp sound, and it’s a very sharp moment. He’s trying not to cry.

Adam doesn’t cry.

The only thing that betrays him is the tiny bump in the word  _finish_. And maybe the way he says  _It_ , like he’s already looking at a dead version of It in his mind, but he’s resolved not to show Ronan, for whatever reason, how much that thought hurts.

How much  _that thought hurts_.

 _How much_  that thought hurts.

 _How much that thought hurts_.

He’s always so stoic, so determined to be independent whatever the cost, that Ronan never…

Ronan thought he’d been spending Adam’s freshman year stupidly falling in love on his own. It’s such a moronic, simple realization that it makes Ronan angry. They’re in this  _together_.

“Parrish. Look at me.  _Adam_.” Adam whips his head around, angry, hurt, and Ronan has always thought Adam was attractive, but this is… heart-stopping. “I’m in love with you.”

It takes Adam aback. He inhales through his mouth and Ronan watches it go right to his chest, and his throat bobs, and his eyes flutter closed. He opens them. He’s dazed, probably, and exhausted, because he never eats or sleeps and he just drove four hours in a car that has few enough parts to be classified as a bicycle, and because he has never heard those words before.

Adam isn’t going to say it back. He’s just had it sprung on him and he’s the type of person who needs to be sure the ground is solid before his footing gets adventurous. So Ronan is going to say it first because Adam needs to hear it first, of the two of them. Ronan knew it before he said it, and he isn’t going to freak out when it happens— doesn’t happen. Whatever.

And the silence stretches on. There’s a war going on inside of Adam’s head. Ronan needs to distract him before it gets bad.

He says, “I hate seeing you because it reminds me that life sucks when you’re gone. But I know you’re doing what you need to do, and I  _want_  you to do that, so just let me deal with this. Because it doesn’t matter how far you go or how long you’re gone. I’ll wait for you.”

He knows this with more than his head. He—and Cabeswater—knows it with his heart, and his bones, and his blood. His blood. So when Cabeswater felt how badly he missed Adam…

“It was me,” Adam says unexpectedly. “It was really me last night.”

And it’s Ronan’s turn to stare. 

“In Cabeswater?” he asks.

Adam nods. His throat bobs again.

“I think I was thinking about you before I fell asleep, and then I knew exactly where I was, and you turned up, only I didn’t know for sure if it was you, and if it was then you seemed angry I was there-”

“At me, not at you,” Ronan interrupts, then has to look away. “I thought… I thought I made a dream you.”

Adam touches Ronan’s cheek, guides him back around, and kisses him. Maybe, Ronan thinks, this is him saying it back.

“I think we found our solution,” says Adam, and he lingers in the space where they breathe the same air. The sun is coming up. His eyes are glittering. “We can refine it. Find out how I ended up in Cabeswater tonight and do it more often. We’ll see each other all the time.”

“And I’ll know when you’re not getting any fucking sleep,” says Ronan, smiling his razor’s smile. He kisses Adam again. “It’s freezing. Get inside, I’ll clean up this shit and be right there.”

“But your back—”

“It’s fine now.”

“It’s… what?”

“It’s fine,” says Ronan. “I’m sure. Get inside, Parrish.”

Adam does not argue; he leaves Ronan to snatch up all the rusty bandages from the deck, the bedsheet, the first aid kit. Ronan knows he’ll pass out the moment he finds the empty guest bedroom, so he takes the time to shower (and dry off with an old shirt) before joining him.


End file.
